ESIC Seville hosted last January 24 the event “Innovation v.. culture of innovation. Hidral case”, an appointment with innovation in which professionals who are working to implement the culture of innovation in companies have shared the methodology and tools they use.

The professionals who led this meeting are Fran Chuan, co-founder and CEO of InnoQuotient, David Cerdá, associate consultant at Strategyco and professor at ESIC Business & Marketing School, Jaime McLaren, director of the Order Engineering department of Hidral SA, and Fabio Sgardi, director at Hidral Gobel SL.

The event began with a networking coffee after which Patricia Cuevas, director of ESIC Seville, welcomed the participants and announced other events held by ESIC Seville school for the benefit of professionals.

David Cerdá then introduced the session by addressing the concept of courage, critical thinking and its relationship with innovation in organizations.

In the second part of the event, Fran Chuan discussed how to predict the future with data from the present and argued that innovation goes hand in hand with the sustainability of the company, since, above all, it seeks the permanence of the company by adapting it to the circumstances of the environment.

How to start the innovation process in a company

To start the innovation process in a company, Fran advised to define what it consists of and to stimulate within the organization four skills that we all have innate: curiosity, imagination, creativity and experimentation.

He addressed the different classifications of innovation by approach, by areas in the company, by quantity, and by speed, and then detailed how each company has to agree on its definition, since it is linked to the culture of the organization itself.

He also explained the difference between the concepts of ‘ideas and solutions’ and ‘innovative leadership versus innovation culture’, which many organizations confuse, as he shared at the event, where he assured that “innovative cultures transcend their leaders”.

At the end of his speech, Fran clarified the keys to the process of implementing the culture of innovation, in which it is necessary that the company knows its internal culture to compare itself with other organizations in its territory, and thus be able to accelerate the cultural transformation.

Hidral, case of success

He gave as an example of this process the company Hidral, the Andalusian company leader in the sector of elevators and platforms with mobility. With presence in the five continents, they focus on diagnosing, investigating and experimenting to improve continuously.

Jaime Mclaren and Fabio Sgardi, promoters of the advancement of innovation in Hidral company, answered all the questions raised by the attendees, such as: what results have been obtained so far in the process, what specific methodology has been implemented in the organization, how have they solved the brakes from the perspective of lack of resources and lack of time when the need to innovate arises, or how do they measure the innovation process and what are the indicators? One of the answers to this last question is the InnoQuotient tool, the tool that diagnoses the culture of an organization to be considered innovative and that has been used in the process of working on the culture of innovation in Hidral.

Finally, all companies with more than 50 workers who attended the event have been invited to participate in the Andalusian Innovation Culture Study 2023, which brings three benefits: to know their organizational culture, to compare results with organizations in the territory and to collaborate to accelerate innovation in the environment.